Portuguese olives

Luis Campos is a young filmmaker who co-produced with other four colleagues, a short film awarded, "Olive" which was the theme of our conversation about movies, cinema and the unmistakable Manuel de Oliveira.

"Olive" was one idea that came from a personal experience or not?
Luís Campos- The "Olive" is one of four films, with Ana Almeida, Humberto Rocha, João Cazau and I, who have in common the fact that all have studied cinema in Covilhã. Therefore, the character of Olivia has a lot of our personal experiences related to that fact, some of the decors, situations, actors or even characters in the film relate to that our common experience.

It's your personal tribute to the work of Manuel Oliveira was the motto of this short film?

LC: It was a challenge of the faculty of cinema course at UBI (University of Beira Interior), for our final draft of the Master, all students would have to make a movie related to Manoel de Oliveira, which celebrated its centenary that year, with total freedom of approach. The four of us knew immediately that we wanted to pay tribute to the person, the unique personality of Manoel de Oliveira, since we hold a very special feeling of recognition and admiration before the work and life of Manoel de Oliveira. Although the film does not seem to match a tribute and the narrative of the film go far against those who were our main influences at the time, films from "Juno" to "The Amélie", which is a kind of contradiction from the cinema of Manoel de Oliveira, creating "Olive" was a way of perpetuating that feeling.

You used some of the famous filming techniques, static plans, of the Portuguese filmmaker?

LC: Interestingly, the fixed plan more "long" we used in "Olive", endowed with iconic and semiotic force the best Oliveira film style is when Olivia leaves the house and sits on the wall in front of the Fifth Empire, the tavern the landlord Manoel, with a closed door and open another on his side was commented by many viewers as too long and ineffective in the development of the narrative. This can serve as a kind of reflection to how most people interpret the film by Manoel de Oliveira. We can say that the film by Manoel de Oliveira that most influenced "Olive" at least in terms of tone or language feature film, was the "Aniki Bóbó". There are several references to his films over "Olive", but we focused essentially on the finding as the general population reacts to the films by Manoel de Oliveira and before cinema in general, in a small medium like Covilhã. This relationship of the people to Manoel de Oliveira cinema is a character with it's own life in Olive and its narrative arc holds up much in the way of how this conflict will superficiality in understanding and collective recognition.

Interestingly the film focuses on a particular location in the country where all the action happens, but you decided not to include landscape plans, why the story was most important?

LC: We have created a script with more than 30 pages and we knew that this corresponds to about 1/3 of a feature film. We had five days to shoot the film, played by Covilhã actors who accepted our challenge and we had to make some decisions regarding the full use of this time. In that sense, yes. Our focus was mainly on getting the story to work according to the initial view. We have a sequence in the Serra da Estrela, which can include some general plans with the landscape of Cova da Beira, and another sequence of Olivia walking the streets of Covilhã, which reveals a bit of architecture and history of the site. But always felt that Olive would be a narrative film, using many dialogues and many camera positions, in contrast to most of Oliveira's films. But in its contradiction, if just to supplement with Oliveira's work. The cinema is universal, has endless possibilities. We made sure to give a copy to Manoel de Oliveira. We do not know if he ever came to watch it, or what was his opinion towards "Olive", but the film is essentially it was made for him. It was the way we found to, our style, thank you for the incredible legacy he left.

The four short films that you produced, you can tell me which is your favorite and why?

LC: I have a very proud feeling about "Olive", which had a very honest way, a very interesting journey, collecting many awards at festivals, and continues to win viewers after all these years, was done in 2008, its own achievement was extremely difficult in terms of time, encountered setbacks and available budget; just so it's an incredible feeling of mission accomplished that leaves us very proud. I have a huge nostalgia for "Horizon", which was the first. We had a wonderful team who would like to accompany me in any other production I might make in the future. The Shooting of this film experience was very enriching in terms of personal learning and strengthening bonds of friendship. "Hindu Thing" was an exercise in an end-of-week fun. I keep good memories. But I still have the belief that "Chasin 'The Bird" was the most valuable short film, the cinematic language resource point of view, and more mature than we did. All of our short, this is the one that explores the visual function of performing, using the camera with subtext, the artistic construction of an environment, a tone, a coded narrative that requires more strenuous interaction of the viewer, conjugation semiotic various other elements which give depth to the film. Not a film as effective as "Olive", in relation to the general public, but it's a movie that I find very valuable. It's an interesting treat for moviegoers, if I may say something like this. I also consider that "Olive" is more directly connected to my heart, "Chasin 'The Bird" is closer to my mind while creative being.